Last weekend I visited Nina for a well deserved break. As Nina had come to Amsterdam for two weekends in a row and then we missed a weekend, it had been almost a month since I had been in Germany. It had also been about two weeks since I had taken 2 days off from one of my various jobs.
Friday night we headed into Aachen for an inspired meal at a Mediterranean restaurant. You never
know until you try a new place. Hopefully the restaurant we are going to this weekend is much better. Aachen does offer a good selection of Italian gelato shops, which we treated ourselves to as we walked around the city centre. We did some window shopping and walked through the foyer of the 200 year old playhouse.
We went to the train station to catch
the train back home to find out it had been cancelled due to a fire near the tracks. Instead of sending us to the busses, as I would expect, they gave us a free taxi ride. A line of taxis sat next to the station and after filling out a small form, we were taken wherever we wanted to go. That is customer service! Saturday was a mellow day, which is exactly what I needed/wanted. We went for a walk and played our fill of games. In the evening we went to a party on the outskirts of town. The whole evening was spent on the deck and in the garden.
Surrounded by meadows, it was a peaceful setting and an enjoyable evening.I usually stay until Monday morning and head home when Nina heads to school. But this Sunday I had a concert to see in the small town of Zoetermeer, on the way back to Amsterdam. I had been planning to see this show for some time as they are one of my favourite bands. In Europe you can see a lot of music that is never played in Canada. What is mainstream here is not the same as back home. Unfortunately, this meant missing the final Euro2008 game; Germany vs. Spain. I would have like to see this game in Germany as that would have been exciting. As it happens, I found myself in the Utrecht train station about 40 minutes into the game. In the station they have an enormous screen on the wall that usually shows world news. However they were
broadcasting the game and there was a sizable crowd of travellers gathered to watch it. In the 15 minutes I had between trains I managed to catch the one and only goal in the game. In one of my earlier blogs I mentioned how the buildings lean forward. And as this is reclaimed land, the buildings shift over time. I have come across two buildings have been condemned for leaning and shifting to a dangerous degree.
This week I have been back to
working. Seeing as I work from home and have been doing so for 2 ½ months now, I am getting a little sick of always being in this apartment. So a few weeks back I started working in the afternoon in a coffee café about 10 minutes from here. I really like it and the cappuccinos are pretty good too. I have since found a few more and go to at least one of them for 3 hours in the mid afternoon. I went for a 3 hour bike ride earlier in the week. The sun was out and it was one of the hottest days yet at
26 degrees. In the later afternoon I rode as far East as I could. I live by the Western side of the ring-road highway that encircles Amsterdam. On my ride I went beyond the Eastern side and went as far as the city limit. I came to a large meadow that stretched as far as I could see. That is where the city gives way to the wilderness. The buildings on the side of Amsterdam are very modern. In fact there are large developments the size of Coal Harbour which have only been there for the last 5 years. It’s quite a contrast. 
Agné, my Lithuanian roommate, is moving out as she has been accepted into Maastricht University. So Marc and I have put an ad out and have some interviews lined up with a few girls. We met one tonight who we both really got on well with, so I think we will invite her to move in. Tomorrow I work at the cruise ship terminal then I jump on a train to spend the weekend with Nina. It’s going to be a very busy weekend. This week there is a local competition
in the her town. I think it has to do with a slingshot crossbow contraption. It’s also the CHIO which is the horse jumping event they have this time every year. In fact, tomorrow is the anniversary of when I left last year and the first thing we did when I arrived was go to this event. It’s also our year and a half anniversary. So, I am looking forward to the weekend.
